🇵🇰 → 🇸🇦

How easy is Arabic (MSA) for Urdu speakers?

Going from Urdu to Arabic (MSA) (العربية) has a composite linguistic distance of 65% (curated lexical data). Below is the dimension-by-dimension breakdown.

65% distance FSI Cat IV (Hardest) — ~2,200 hours

Lexical similarity

20%

Shared vocabulary, cognates, and loanwords.

Grammatical distance

68%

Morphology, syntax, word order, cases.

Phonological similarity

11%

Shared sounds and phoneme inventory.

Writing-system match

100%

Arabic → Arabic

Genealogical kinship

Indo-European ↔ Afro-Asiatic

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Other easy languages for Urdu speakers

The 5 languages with the lowest linguistic distance from Urdu:

🇮🇳

Hindi

12% distance
🇮🇳

Punjabi

32% distance
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Gujarati

44% distance
🇳🇵

Nepali

45% distance
🇧🇩

Bengali

47% distance

Think you can tell them apart?

A quick 3-question check between Urdu and Arabic (MSA). No signup.